"These
essays and reviews have been produced over a decade during which the
stuff of science fiction became the stuff of everyday life. There
have been other decades filled with intense excitement about the imaginary
future. We can see the marks of their passing in city planning, public
architecture, furniture: the streamlining, the monochrome and chrome
of everyday objects first admired, then considered hideous, eventually
fashionable again. But whether or not we consider the Internet hideous,
it is unlikely that telematic networking will be consigned to the
lumber room of possibilities unachieved, or that biotechnology will
come totally undone, despite a mixed performance so far on the money
markets; perhaps equally unlikely that the demographic and economic
changes which have created Girl Power, leaving political and idealist
feminism bewildered on the margins,will be dismantled. Dreams of galactic
empire did not come true, the Invaders from Mars, or any other alien
planet in our locality, are consigned to fantasy. But a great deal
of the future imagined by my generation's sf writers is actually
with us."Deconstructing the Starships, Introduction, 1999

to put it another way, the cyberpunk writers
(circa 1984-1995) said: in the near future, Digital technology will
get incredibly, fantastically much better, and everything else will
get much, MUCH worse& they were dead right.